Business Solutions
PHOENIX GLOBAL INTERACTIONS NEW-WORLD CUSTOMER CONTACT
BRIEF BACKGROUND OF PHOENIX GLOBAL INTERACTIONS Phoenix Global Interactions is a division of Phoenix Global Solutions. Phoenix Global Interactions (PGI) is an offshore contact center and IT help desk service provider, offering 24/7 Customer Relationship Management solutions to corporations. Phoenix Global Solutions (PGS) was established in 1996, in Bangalore, India, as a wholly owned subsidiary of The Phoenix Companies Inc. The Phoenix Companies Inc (NYSE:PNX) is based in Hartford, USA – and is a premier provider of wealth management services, for the last 150 years, with over US $90 billion Assets under management. PGS offers solutions in Insurance Business Application Outsourcing, Business Process Outsourcing, Shrink-wrapped Applications, Knowledge Acquisition Center Phoenix Global Solutions has facilities in USA and Bangalore, India. It has alliance partners in Switzerland, Holland, Australia, United Kingdom, Oman, Argentina and other countries. For more information, please visit www.pgsolutions.com as well as www.pginteractions.com
THE EXISTING NETWORKING INFRASTRUCTURE. The Infrastructure in the USA included a Co-location facility at ATT in New York. This is the termination point for the US End of Phoenix’s E1 (2 mbps) IPLC link to India – and is managed by a Cisco IGX WAN switch. Further, the company also has 10 T1 trunks terminated on the Cisco IGX WAN Switch from the local PSTN for local and long distance dialing in USA. The infrastructure on the India side is based out of Whitefield in Bangalore and managed by a Cisco IGX WAN. For all out-bound dialling, Phoenix has deployed a Davox Predictive Dialer system. The Dialer is connected to the Cisco IGX WAN switch over 4 T1 trunks at the IPLC end. The Davox PDS has 2 E1 trunks connected to Cisco 6513 LAN Switch for theagent-side connection.
THE NEED FOR CHANGE Phoenix’s primary reason to consider a change in infrastructure was that the existing network impeded growth. Says Radhakrishna S, Program Director, Phoenix Global Solutions (I) Pvt. Ltd., “ The earlier facility posed three challenges. Firstly, it provided no Disaster Recovery plan – which is an imperative in today’s market environment; second, the network was not scalable in congruence with the growth we were expecting in our business. Thirdly, and most importantly, we were keen to adopt a converged network architecture to carry both data and voice.” Clearly, this required Phoenix to consider multi-site business architecture capable of working over a single network highway. The three technology imperatives for Phoenix were: G
To expand the existing facility to a multi-site environment
G
To extend the call center operations
G
To extend the architecture of the call center to contact center.
Most critically, Phoenix was keen to carry through the transition within 30 days – so as to minimize downtime to their business.
THE CHALLENGES – AND THE REASONS FOR GOING CISCO… One of the biggest technical challenges that Phoenix faced was to work towards providing a multi-location environment. Says Radhakrishna S., “Since our existing system was in the TDM environment, we had to have minimum down time to move to the IPCC environment”. Further, it was also critical to minimize the cost for the multi-site environment – while increasing efficiency in terms of time and performance. Phoenix was counting on these upgrades to deliver flexibility to its business model – and thereby complement its operations in the highly competitive Indian Call Center environment. The Cisco solution effectively resolved all the three of Phoenix’s business challenges. Simply speaking, the Cisco IP-CC solution will provide us the scalability, reliability, redundancy as well as the ability to introduce new applications
THE IMPLEMENTATION Phoenix has implemented the entire suite of Cisco’s IP-based Contact Centre solutions – as well as the Cisco IGX WAN Switch, the Cisco Catalyst 6513 and Cisco’s IP-Telephony solutions. At the enterprise desktop end, Phoenix has replaced the traditional Avaya PBX with the Cisco Call Manager and IP-Phones. USA END
INDIA END
IGX 8430
IGX 8420
IPLC - 2 Mb
T1
Local Loops 3 x 2 Mb
Public Network
4 Cisco Managers InCluster
Bangalore - WhiteField Faculity
CWLMS-2.0
IGX 8410 T1-PRI T1-CAS
Cisco Catalyst 6513 ICM Router
ICM Components ICM Logger
E1-PRI
Cisco Queue Manager CCM CM CT SERVER
Davox Prediciture Dialer LB&O/B AGENT 450 Users
THE NETWORK BACK-E4ND AT PHOENIX GLOBAL INTERACTIONS
Admin Workstation
BENEFITS TO PHOENIX The design, installation and integration network lifecycle services are completely deployed at Phoenix – and is now in the operations stage. Says Radhakrishna S, “We did have issues with the software during implementation, but today, I can safely say that the Cisco IPCC has helped us over-come most of our business and technology challenges. Even at such an early stage of operations, we can see the cost and efficiency benefits that the IPCC delivers. New World applications such as IP-Telephony as well as enhanced Supervising software have helped us enhance the customer experience. Additionally, it has also provided a clear roadmap for us to enhance our customer service through value-added customer contact & customer relationship management services.” B Ashok, Vice President, Cisco Systems India said, “We have worked very closely with Phoenix to develop the optimal network design to best suit their requirements. Cisco has also worked to ensure a comprehensive transfer of skills and knowledge.” Satish Bangalore, Managing Director, Phoenix Global Solutions ( I ) Pvt. Ltd., said, “Our belief in staying ahead of the technology curve and exceeding customer expectations steered us to use IPCC, so as to support multiple channels - web, email, voice, video and fax. Our continued efforts to leverage cutting edge technology while delivering high-end customized solutions and services seemed to find the right fit with Cisco IPCC. Further, the multi-site flexibility and support to location independent agents, augured well with our Global network of Delivery Centers. Looking at our future plans, we envision the Cisco association to complement Phoenix’s fast paced business–technology initiatives and customer centric approach”. The mission statement for Phoenix Global Solutions says - “PGI defines superior and added value in personalized multi-channel customer care. The integration and application of current technologies with well developed human skills shall provide greater response and understanding to customers’ needs, thereby delivering increased loyalty and satisfaction, at the lowest costs.”
Very simply, the Cisco IP-CC solution seems to have been custom built to help Phoenix deliver precisely what it set out to do.
